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Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nautilus Biotechnology First Quarter 2026 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Jian Yi, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Earlier today, Nautilus Biotechnology released financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2026. If you haven't received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an email to [email protected]. Joining me today from Nautilus are Sujal Patel, Co-founder and CEO, Parag Mallick, Co-founder and Chief Scientist, and Anna Mowry, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release Nautilus issued today.

Except as required by law, Nautilus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial or product pipeline projections or other forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast on April 28, 2026. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sujal.

Thanks, Jian, thank you all for joining us today. Before turning to the quarter, I'd like to begin by recapping the Q1 announcements we highlighted on our last earnings call. At that time, we discussed the launch of our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program in January, the debut of the Voyager Platform to the proteomics community at US HUPO in St. Louis, Missouri, and our announcement of a collaboration with the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar to advance development of an alpha-synuclein proteoform assay for Parkinson's disease. We also highlighted our progress moving into the later stages of our broad-scale assay configuration change and our plans to make 2026 a pivotal year focused on commercialization.

We also outlined a series of key milestones for 2026, including progressing early access customers into active Tau services projects, expanding early access in the second half of the year to include a second proteoform assay focused on an oncology target, introducing broad scale capabilities into early access later in 2026, and placing Voyager instruments externally through beta deployments. We also said we expect to initiate our commercial launch in late 2026 by opening the platform for pre-orders with customer installations beginning in early 2027. This would be followed by general availability of broad scale capabilities in the first half of 2027. This quarter, I'm pleased to say we are executing well against that roadmap. Today, we'll discuss the meaningful steps we've taken toward commercialization, including building out our commercial team and growing customer engagement in the early access program.

We'll also cover the scientific and technical progress we've made across our Iterative Mapping assay portfolio, as well as how we continue to manage our resources prudently while investing in the opportunities ahead. A key priority for 2026 has been building the commercial organization needed to support launch activities. During the quarter, we welcomed Amber Faust as our VP of Global Sales, and we have since hired two additional sales team members. These are experienced industry veterans thoughtfully selected for their expertise and commitment to the field of proteomics, and we're excited about the depth of expertise they bring. With this team in place, we believe we are well-positioned to engage prospective customers ahead of our commercial launch.

Building on the successful launch of our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program in January, we're pleased to report growing momentum and customer interest for the Tau assay and for custom assay development. Inbound interest has been steady and broad-based, spanning academic centers, nonprofit research institutions, and biopharma organizations. Today, we're excited to reiterate that last month, we announced our first named EAP customer, Baylor College of Medicine. Combined with our existing collaborations, we're pleased to be working with several academic institutions with deep expertise in proteomics and disease research. This is a meaningful milestone. We believe that it reflects the excitement top-tier institutions are placing in the Voyager Platform and marks an important step in translating our development progress into active, real-world scientific partnerships.

While these early engagements are not intended to drive near-term revenue, they are designed to enable real biological discovery, support publications and grant applications, and ensure our workflows and data outputs align closely with customer needs. Importantly, we are beginning to receive requests to expand similar offerings into oncology-focused targets as well. What has been particularly encouraging is the quality of customer engagement we are observing. Researchers are increasingly recognizing how Nautilus' single molecule analysis of proteoforms and proteomes produces unique and highly differentiated data. We view this data as critically important across a variety of biological questions and also as a powerful foundation for training next generation AI models. Taken together, we believe these developments represent meaningful steps towards commercialization and reinforce our confidence that we have a highly differentiated platform and are addressing important unmet needs in the market.

On the technology front, we continue to make progress advancing the core Voyager Platform designed to execute a diverse family of Iterative Mapping based assays. On the targeted proteoform assay front, we move forward with our oncology proteoform target down selection process, narrowing our focus to the highest priority candidates for our next Early Access Program expansion. On the broad scale front, we continue to advance our assay configuration changes and improve assay performance. Parag will walk through these technical updates in more depth. With that, I'll turn the call over to Parag.

Thanks, Sujal. Overall, Q1 was a productive quarter for our product and scientific teams. From the Voyager Platform development perspective, we made meaningful progress across our assay portfolio. In addition, we gained greater clarity on the remaining work required to reach our next assay development milestones. Critically, we are also increasingly applying the platform to generate biological insights not accessible to existing proteomics technologies, which drives enthusiasm and engagement from the scientific community. In addition to our ongoing platform and assay development activities, we continue to advance exciting studies with our collaborators. These studies highlight the unique insights enabled by Iterative Mapping and by the Voyager Platform. During Q1, we continued supporting the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Allen Institute for Brain Science as they advance findings toward publication.

We believe that these projects have generated the most extensive and quantitative view of the Tau proteoform landscape to date. These studies now span multiple genetic risk factors, brain regions, and disease severities, clearly demonstrating that Iterative Mapping can reveal biology beyond the reach of conventional proteomics. Taken together, these studies show that our data is not only technically robust, but biologically meaningful. We believe this new class of proteoform-level information can deepen understanding of disease mechanisms, uncover novel therapeutic targets, and enable more precise biomarkers, ultimately helping improve drug discovery and development. Among the most exciting results were findings from the Buck Institute performed with the Alpha instrument at their site. They specifically examined the relationship between the gene APOE, which is strongly associated with risk of early onset Alzheimer's disease and proteoforms of Tau. The specific linkage between APOE and Tau was previously intractable to study.

The Buck Institute's data revealed for the first time distinctive proteoform distributions associated with APOE mutations. We look forward to them sharing their findings in a forthcoming manuscript submission. Progress on proteoform assays was strong in Q1. During the quarter, we formalized our service lab capability to process customer samples, an important operational milestone as we support the Iterative Mapping early access program. Underpinning this milestone, we completed a formal verification and validation study of the service lab and also standardized our customer-facing data and results packages so that researchers receive consistent publication quality outputs. The assay, as performed within our service lab, passed verification, demonstrating that it met our requirements for accuracy, dynamic range, reproducibility, and stability. We look forward to sharing initial biological findings from our early access program engagements in future quarters.

In parallel, we advanced our alpha-synuclein proteoform program under the Michael J. Fox Foundation funded collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. During Q1, we made early progress on assay development using commercially available affinity reagents. Although custom reagent development from our Weill Cornell collaborators experienced delays related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, we progressed the assay with commercially available reagents and will incorporate collaborator-developed reagents as they become available. Despite this timing shift, the program is on track scientifically, and we view this collaboration as an important opportunity to further demonstrate the breadth of Iterative Mapping beyond Tau. While much of our current momentum is in neurodegeneration, it's important to emphasize that Iterative Mapping is a highly general approach and not limited to neuroscience. We see meaningful long-term potential across oncology, immunology, cardiology, and beyond. In Q1, we made meaningful progress on our oncology proteoform down selection process.

After evaluating multiple candidate proteins across key oncology indications, we have narrowed our focus to a prioritized set of targets that we believe offer the strongest combination of biological relevance, assay feasibility, and customer interest. Examples of proteins we are examining for developing proteoform assays include EGFR, AKT1, and P53. Proteins like these have been prioritized from a larger field of candidates because they represent a wide spectrum of proteoform complexity that is clearly connected to disease processes of interest in pharma and across biomedical research. Critically, they are among the most clinically relevant signaling proteins in cancer biology. EGFR is a well-validated oncology target with numerous approved therapies and known resistance-driving proteoforms. AKT1 sits at the nexus of the PI3 kinase mTOR pathway and is implicated in a broad range of tumor types with multiple emerging therapeutics. P53 is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancer.

Across each of these targets, proteoform-level resolution is essential to developing next-generation therapies, targeting and optimizing existing therapies, and generally accelerating drug development pipelines. Given our progress in Q1, we believe we are on target for having one oncology-focused proteoform assay enter early access in the second half of 2026, consistent with the timeline we have communicated. We believe oncology represents a compelling next market opportunity, providing access to a broader customer base while also aligning well with the capabilities of the Voyager Platform to deliver proteoform-level resolution and highly reproducible measurement in complex biological systems. In summary, we have made significant progress on both transitioning our existing Iterative Mapping-based proteoform assay to a commercial offering and expanding the portfolio. This quarter also saw good progress on advancing our Iterative Mapping assay for broad-scale proteome analysis.

As a reminder, the core components of the Voyager Platform are assay agnostic, relying upon the same instrument and software stack. The primary differences between the assays are in the consumables. Consequently, advances in the maturity of targeted proteoform assays carry over to supporting broad-scale assays. This quarter, we saw advances in key components of our broad-scale assay configuration, including in our flow cells, surface chemistry, and computational models that are expected to form the basis of our launch configuration. We have seen performance improvements with each iteration and side-by-side comparisons of our new assay configuration versus the prior configuration show meaningful gains in critical areas, including our ability to increase the percentage of our affinity reagent catalog that is compatible with our assay configuration.

In previous quarters, we had mentioned that we were concurrently iterating our assay configuration alongside testing a large portion of our affinity reagent catalog on new configurations towards the goal of increasing the percentage of our catalog that is compatible with our assay configuration. Concretely, our current catalog consists of thousands of probes that have been shown to bind to trimer epitope targets. However, this is the first step in a rigorous characterization process that includes verifying probes bind in a given assay configuration with strong differentiation between on-target and off-target binding in a single molecule context. In addition, extensive profiling is performed to define models for which epitopes each probe recognizes. We require each of these criteria to declare a probe to be assay compatible. In Q1, we nearly tripled the number of probes that have been qualified as compatible.

The major driver of this increase has been the newer assay configurations and our work testing a larger portion of the catalog through these configurations. Outside of these studies, we also achieved our largest number of high cycle decode experiments to date. Furthermore, we have been continually stepping up the complexity of our sample inputs and are now routinely including lysate mixtures and full lysates in our large-scale experiments. Additionally, we are now actively developing a validation pipeline for single molecule identifications, an important commitment to scientific rigor. Because the Voyager Platform may identify proteins at levels not previously observable, we are focused on ensuring we have robust methods to validate those identifications and benchmark them against orthogonal analysis methods. We expect to provide further updates as this work progresses through the year.

Overall, we believe the progress this quarter reflects maturation of the Voyager Platform across both commercial-ready targeted applications and next generation broad scale capabilities. With that, I'll turn the call over to Anna to review our financials.

Thanks, Parag. Turning to our financial update, we continue to demonstrate prudent management of both operating expenses and cash, and we remain on track or better against the full year guidance we previously provided. Total operating expenses were $16.1 million for the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 14% from the prior-year period. Research and development expenses were $9.7 million for the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 16% from the prior-year period. This decrease was driven primarily by a $1.0 million decrease in salaries and related benefits related to the reduction in force implemented in the first quarter of 2025, with the remaining portion coming from reduced development costs, lower facilities costs, and lower stock compensation expense.

General and administrative expenses were $6.4 million for the first quarter of 2026, a decrease of 12% from the prior year period. The decrease was primarily due to a $0.6 million decrease in stock-based compensation expense, along with a $0.3 million decrease in salaries and related benefits. We ended the first quarter of 2026 with $143.4 million in cash equivalents and investments. Cash burn in Q1 2026 was $12.8 million, which benefited from lower spend overall and $1.1 million in cash generated from stock option exercises. Based on our current trajectory, we still believe our financial plan supports a cash runway that extends through 2027. With respect to revenue, recognition associated with the Michael Joe. Fox Foundation grant has moved more slowly than originally anticipated due to delays related to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.We continue to expect approximately $0.5 million in total revenue for the year, with a greater portion now shifting into later quarters. We remain confident in our financial plan and believe our capital position supports execution against our strategic milestones. Back to you, Sujal.

Thanks, Anna. To close, this quarter represented another period of solid execution against the plan we laid out for 2026. We're making meaningful progress toward commercial launch through the build-out of our commercial team, growing our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program customer engagement, and improving market awareness. At the same time, we're advancing the Voyager Platform performance overall, improving the science behind both our targeted and broad scale offerings, and expanding the proteoform portfolio into additional disease areas such as oncology. We remain focused on the milestones we previously described for 2026 and believe the work completed this quarter keeps us on a strong path toward launch readiness. I'm proud of what the team has accomplished and grateful to our collaborators, customers and shareholders for their ongoing support. Thank you for joining us today. With that, we'll be happy to take your questions. Operator.

Thank you very much. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Subbu Nambi of Guggenheim. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Good morning. My first question is, how many customers are actively submitting samples through Tau early access today? What's the sample throughput been like?

Good morning, Subbu. This is Sujal. To answer your question, the only launch EAP customer that we've announced so far is Baylor College of Medicine. The EAP pipeline, the service offering, is being used for a number of collaborator samples, and Parag can comment on a few of those names that he had mentioned in the prepared remarks.

Absolutely. I think amongst continued work with the Allen Institute, the Neural Stem Cell Institute and others are actively ongoing.

Perfect. Thank you, guys. Beyond Buck, Allen and Baylor, how many active engagements do you have in the pipeline right now? You mentioned you have exposure or interest from both academic, nonprofit, and pharma, I was just wondering about the mix there.

What I would say is that, it's important to recognize that Amber Faust, our VP of Global Sales, just joined us, I think just about two months ago here, and we have two additional members in the sales organization. A team of three. That team came together last Monday and yesterday, it's still very early in the development of our commercial sales organization, we're really excited to have what we consider to be a full team right now. As we are beginning to prospect for customers for the Tau Early Access Program and as well starting to build the early pipeline, for our oncology targets, you know, the sales cycles are a little bit different between academic and pharma.

We've got, you know, a few very engaged on the academic side that are very interested in moving forward on the Tau side of things. We're just starting to see some really interesting and compelling activity from pharma. We're looking forward to the sales team that's just been hired to pick up those engagements and start to build that pipeline further as we move through the year with Tau early access and as we enter early access for our oncology proteoform in the second half of the year.

Super helpful. I know this is all early, but we're just trying to get a sense of early engagement. My last question, when a pharma company evaluates the Nautilus technology, what's the typical diligence process look like? Are they asking for a head-to-head comparison against any existing solution, or are they evaluating this as a net new capability?

Yeah. Parag, do you want to take this one and then I can add some color?

Absolutely. I think one of the things that we're seeing very clearly is that it's incredibly apparent to people that our platform is hugely differentiated relative to existing platforms, both mass spectrometry and typical affinity-based platforms. Oftentimes the conversations really are about the diligence is them looking through our submitted manuscripts, asking us many technical questions, really digging into how the technology works and the data that we've generated so far. There is significantly less interest in head-to-heads, I would say, because it's clear that the data that we generate is very different than the data that comes out of existing platforms.

Yeah. This is Sujal. Just to add, one comment, put a fine point on this. I think, you know, having been at US HUPO myself in the last quarter and talking to a lot of prospective customers and KOLs, I think that the thing that's most exciting for the folks that I talk to is that the data that we generate with this Tau proteoform assay and that we will generate with our future proteoform assays is data that isn't reasonably collectible with any other method on the planet. There's no other way to gather this data.

What that gives us is it gives us a very unique conversation and a very powerful conversation to have with the customer, which is very different from other newer entrants in the Dx and tool space, where they come in with technology that might be cheaper, it might be higher performing. This is net new biological insight that the world hasn't seen, that increasingly, as we look at our collaborators' work, seems to be incredibly relevant to disease pathology and incredibly relevant to human health.

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you very much. Our next call comes from the line of Dan Brennan of TD Cowen. Dan, your line is open.

Hey, good morning. This is Kyle on for Dan. Just want to start maybe on the oncology side, I guess. What's the reception been so far on oncology samples, and is Baylor ready to run them on-site?

Great. You know, as I kind of mentioned, the reception from potential customers to the EAP program's capabilities, Tau assay capabilities has been really incredible. If you'll recall, today we have a Tau services offering. That means customer sends us a sample, we analyze it in our facility, and we send back a standardized report package to the customer. As Parag mentioned in prepared remarks, that is the service offering that has now fully completed verification and validation, and the first set of official EAP customer samples that'll go through, i.e., not including our collaborators, which are already going through, will be the Baylor College of Medicine, which will happen shortly.

You'll also recall, not from this earnings call, but from previous ones, that we have one Alpha unit that's been in the field for approximately a year, maybe a little bit over a year. That Alpha unit is physically in the lab at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging.

When the Buck generates data, the Buck is generating on their own instrument, all of the other engagements for early access will be through our service offering until we reach the second half of the year, where we do expect in late Q3 and Q4 to begin placing a few beta units with additional customers to prove out the on-site capabilities, the kits, the shipping, and work through final bits of feedback ahead of a planned commercial launch as we hit the end of the year, with first instrument availability and shipping in the beginning of next year.

Got it. Maybe just on the broad scale assay configuration, it sounds like it's progressing well there, but are there any technical hurdles that you still have to overcome before it's, you know, ready for launch?

Maybe I'll take this, maybe I'll take this one, Dan. I think as we've messaged, and you're correct in your assessment, we have definitely made tremendous progress on that assay configuration and the set of iterations of configurations that we've been working through. In addition, we've made tremendous progress on characterizing the library and how it is performant in these iterations of the configuration. In terms of technical work, you know, I think as we went through with the Tau service offering, you know, once we had the assay up and running and stable and were very happy with its performance, we then went through an incredibly rigorous verification and validation process as well.

As we look forward, that's really the work that we're looking forward to, is getting to a place where we are happy with the performance characteristics of the assay and then have done the full suite of verification and validation before we place it in customers' hands.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you very much. This concludes our question and answer session. At this time, thank you for your participation in today's conference, and this does conclude our program. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Nautilus Biotechnology Q4 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Ji-Yon Yi, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Earlier today, Nautilus released financial results for the quarter ended December 31, 2025. If you haven't received this news release or if you'd like to be added to the company's distribution list, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. Joining me today from Nautilus are Sujal Patel, Co-Founder and CEO; Parag Mallick, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist; and Anna Mowry, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that are forward-looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties appears in the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements in the press release Nautilus issued today. Except as required by law, Nautilus disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any financial or product pipeline projections or other forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast on February 26, 2026. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sujal.

Thanks, Ji-Yon, and thank you all for joining us today. Before turning to the quarter, I want to briefly remind everyone of what we're building and why we believe it matters. Nautilus was founded to address a long-standing challenge in life sciences, the lack of technologies capable of comprehensively measuring the proteome with the sensitivity, scale and reproducibility needed to fully understand biology and disease. Our proprietary Iterative Mapping methodology is designed to analyze single intact protein molecules at scale and generate highly reproducible digital protein counts. This methodology is delivered through the Nautilus platform, an integrated system of instrumentation, consumables and software, which can support both broad-scale proteome analysis and targeted proteoform characterization on a single platform. Over time, we believe this data foundation will unlock new biological insight, integrate more effectively with other omics modalities, support next-generation AI-driven discovery in human health and medicine and ultimately help accelerate the development of new therapeutics and diagnostics. With that context, Q4 marked a strong close to 2025 as we continue to make tangible progress towards commercialization, deepen external validation and build momentum with leading research institutions. A key highlight of that progress was our presence at the US Human Proteome Organization Conference, or US HUPO in St. Louis, Missouri this week, where we publicly unveiled the Nautilus Voyager instrument in dramatic fashion to a large audience of influential researchers and prospective future customers, providing the proteomics community with its first tangible view of the instrument we've been building. The response was highly positive and reinforced the strong interest we're seeing from researchers seeking a new class of protein measurement technology. Importantly, when designing Voyager, we were intentional about creating an instrument that looked and felt different, one that conveyed sophistication and innovation while still being approachable and easy to use. We wanted an instrument that reflected the ambition of what we're building while also fitting naturally into modern research environments. And the feedback we received confirmed that this balance resonated strongly with the community. Building on the capabilities of the Voyager instrument and supported by the encouraging tau data we've seen emerging from our early collaborators, we elected to launch our Early Access Program for Iterative Mapping in January earlier than previously communicated. This milestone represents a meaningful step in Nautilus' transition from development to active customer engagement, enabling partners to submit samples, receive data and provide feedback in a streamlined manner. Initial customer response has been encouraging. And while these early engagements are not intended to drive near-term revenue, they are designed to enable real biological discovery, support publications and grant applications and ensure our workflows and data outputs align closely with customers' needs, an approach consistent with how many transformative life sciences platforms has successfully entered the market. The Early Access Program will begin with our Tau proteoform assay and establish a foundation for future assay expansion covering additional proteoform targets and broad-scale applications. Importantly, we believe this early access launch also reflects a forthcoming diversity of assays for our platform beyond tau. For example, in late January, we announced a collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and The Michael J. Fox Foundation focused on alpha-synuclein proteoforms in Parkinson's disease. This MJFF-funded project, $1.6 million in total with $1.2 million coming to Nautilus, combines Professor Hilal Lashuel's deep expertise in neurodegeneration with Nautilus' ability to measure proteins and their functional variants at the single molecule resolution. Understanding alpha-synuclein proteoforms is a priority for MJFF, and we believe this collaboration is a strong example of how Iterative Mapping can be extended to additional high-value proteoform targets and disease areas over time. On the technology front, we continue to make strong progress as we moved into the later stages of our broad-scale assay configuration change. This work is designed to better align with our expanding probe library and improve overall platform performance. We're now seeing the first data from the updated assay on new chips and early readouts are encouraging. Parag will walk through these technical details in more depth, and I'll return later to discuss how this progress informs our expectations for 2026. Taken together, these developments reflect steady progress towards commercialization grounded in real samples, real data, real customer engagement and increasing external validation. Throughout 2025, we remain disciplined in how we invested our resources, meaningfully reducing expenses while continuing to advance our most important technical and strategic priorities. I want to recognize our scientific and engineering teams for their continued focus and execution. With that, I'll turn the call over to Parag.

Thanks, Sujal. I'll now provide an update on our technology and product progress, including what we're learning from our development work and the external validation we're seeing through collaborations. Overall, Q4 was a strong quarter of execution for our product and scientific teams. We continue to see growing validation of the Nautilus platform through both internal development and external partnerships. Importantly, we are increasingly moving beyond demonstrating that the technology works and towards applying it to obtain remarkable biological insights, not possible with existing proteomics approaches. This shift from capability to meaningful application is an important marker of platform maturity and a central focus for the team. Collaborations continue to play a critical role in validating the platform and demonstrating real-world relevance. During the quarter, we completed work with the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, culminating in the presentation of novel tau biology at World HUPO and most recently at US HUPO, and we are now supporting our partners as they prepare their findings for publication. In parallel, through our collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science, we analyzed human brain samples spanning multiple brain regions, genetic backgrounds and disease severities. We believe this work represents the most comprehensive and quantitative Tau proteoforms landscape study to date. Notably, we are observing clear differences in Tau proteoforms patterns across disease severity and brain regions, signals that are not detectable using conventional proteomics approaches and that may help explain variability in disease progression and clinical outcomes. We also anticipate that such insights may be essential for developing the next generation of therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. Stepping back, what stands out is that the data emerging from these collaborations is not only technically robust, but biologically compelling. With each additional study, we gained confidence that Iterative Mapping is enabling access to important biology that has remained out of reach for existing technologies. We believe this new class of proteoform level data has the potential to drive real-world impact by deepening our understanding of disease mechanisms, revealing new therapeutic targets and enabling the development of more precise biomarkers for diagnosis, patient stratification and treatment monitoring. Ultimately, our goal is to demonstrate to the broader scientific community that this represents a transformative foundation of information, one that can help accelerate drug discovery workflows and improve the probability of success in developing new therapeutics. From a platform development perspective, we made meaningful progress across both our broadscale assay and our proteoform assay portfolio, while also gaining greater clarity on the remaining work required to reach our next milestones. Starting with the broadscale assay, we continued advancing our assay, including advancing the assay configuration change we have discussed previously and are now routinely employing our new configuration. During the quarter, we achieved several encouraging milestones, including performing our largest scale experiments to date, which demonstrated Iterative Mapping-based decoding of proteins from increasingly complex mixtures, including cell lysates. In addition, we made good progress on hardening the fabrication process for our new flow cell configuration, and showing assay performance characteristics such as increased on-target binding that give us indications our new assay configuration will enable an expanded affinity reagent library. The work completed in Q4 helped validate key elements of the new configuration and clarify the primary levers needed to drive further performance improvements as we scale towards complex biological samples. Progress on Proteoform assays remains strong. The Tau Proteoform assay continues to track as our first early access offering, and we remain on schedule to begin processing samples through the Early Access Program by the end of Q1. Verification and validation activities are largely complete, and the assay is meeting our requirements for accuracy, dynamic range, reproducibility and stability, marking an important step as we transition tau from development into a high-quality commercial-ready product. In parallel, we formally initiated our proteoform expansion pipeline. As Sujal mentioned, we launched an 18-month collaboration funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation to develop an alpha-synuclein proteoform quantification assay, extending the platform into Parkinson's disease. This program includes development of a pilot assay focused on key post-translational modifications, optimization of enrichment and sample preparation workflows and application of the technology to human brain and biofluid samples. We view this collaboration as an important opportunity to further demonstrate the breadth of Iterative Mapping beyond tau and to expand our proteoform capabilities into additional high-value disease targets. While much of our current momentum is in neurodegeneration, it's important to emphasize that Iterative Mapping is not limited to neuroscience. We see meaningful long-term potential across oncology, immunology, cardiology and beyond. We are currently evaluating multiple oncology-focused candidate proteins with the goal of having an oncology-focused proteoform assay enter early access in the second half of 2026. We believe oncology represents a compelling next market opportunity, providing access to a broader customer base while also aligning well with the capabilities of our platform to deliver proteoform level resolution and highly reproducible measurement in complex biological systems. Overall, Q4 represented a strong quarter of technical execution as we continued advancing our Voyager instrument and end-to-end platform. We made meaningful progress on the broadscale assay configuration change and began generating initial data from the new approach while also advancing our proteoform portfolio with tau on track for early access sample processing by the end of this quarter. At the same time, the growing body of externally generated data from collaborators like the Buck Institute and the Allen Institute continues to validate both the robustness of our measurements and the unique biological insight enabled by Iterative Mapping. Taken together, these developments reflect continued platform maturation and reinforce our confidence in the technical foundation required to scale our assays, broaden our target portfolio and support future commercial deployment. With that, I'll turn the call over to Anna to review our financials.

Thanks, Parag. Turning to our financial results. We continue to demonstrate strong operating discipline in Q4 and throughout 2025. Total operating expenses were $15.4 million for the fourth quarter of 2025, a decrease of 23% from the prior year period and $66.8 million for the fiscal year 2025, a decrease of 18% year-over-year. Research and development expenses were $41.1 million for fiscal year 2025 compared to $50.5 million in fiscal year 2024, representing a decrease of $9.4 million or 19%. This decrease was driven primarily by a $4.5 million reduction in laboratory supplies and equipment expenses, reflecting operating efficiencies, lower development-related costs and continued cost optimization efforts. We also saw a $2.4 million decrease in salaries and related benefits, driven by savings from the reduction in force implemented in the first quarter of 2025, along with a $1.9 million decrease in stock-based compensation expense. General and administrative expenses were $25.7 million for fiscal year 2025 compared to $31.0 million in fiscal year 2024, a decrease of $5.3 million or 17%. This decrease was primarily due to a $3.9 million reduction in stock-based compensation expense, along with a $1.3 million decrease in professional services, largely attributable to lower legal and consulting costs. We ended the quarter with $156.1 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments. Cash burn in 2025 was $50.2 million, down from $57.8 million in 2024, reflecting the benefit of lower headcount and development expenses. Looking ahead, we expect total operating expenses for the full year 2026 to increase as we continue investing in platform development, support the expansion of our Early Access Program and advance commercial readiness activities. We currently anticipate total operating expense growth of approximately 15% to 20% in 2026, and we expect full year 2026 cash burn to be in the range of $65 million to $70 million. Based on these assumptions, we continue to believe our financial plan supports a cash runway that extends through 2027. Following the launch of our Early Access Program in January, our initial customer engagements are primarily with academic key opinion leaders seeking early access to the tau offering to support exploratory research and grant applications. While we expect modest services revenue later in 2026, we anticipate the primary revenue ramp will begin in 2027 once we start shipping instruments. As a reminder, instrument placements drive our recurring consumables business and together, they create a scalable top line. We believe the instrument and consumables ramp will accelerate meaningfully once both our proteoform and broadscale capabilities are generally available, enabling customers to deploy the full power of the platform and driving broader commercial adoption. As Sujal noted earlier, we also announced grant funding from The Michael J. Fox Foundation to support development of an alpha-synuclein proteoform assay. Under this agreement, we expect to receive approximately $1.2 million with development and sample analysis work occurring over approximately 18 months across 2026 and 2027. Revenue will be recognized as the underlying work progresses. Back to you, Sujal.

Thanks, Anna. As we wrap up, 2025 was a year of meaningful progress for Nautilus as we continued advancing the platform and began transitioning toward external engagement. That momentum carried into early 2026 with the launch of our Iterative Mapping Early Access Program and was further highlighted this week by the debut of the Voyager instrument at US HUPO, where we introduced the system directly to the proteomics community. Together, these milestones represent important steps in putting the platform into the hands of researchers. Looking ahead, we expect 2026 to be a pivotal execution year. We plan to begin progressing early access customers into tau services projects, expand early access to include a second proteoform assay focused on an oncology target and introduce broadscale capabilities into early access later in the year. In parallel, we expect to place Voyager instruments externally through beta deployments as an important validation step ahead of commercialization. We expect to initiate our commercial launch in late 2026 by opening the Voyager platform for preorders with instrument installations at customer sites beginning in early '27. At launch, we expect general availability to include the Voyager instrument, our Tau proteoform assay and a second proteoform assay. We anticipate general availability of our broadscale capabilities in the first half of '27 as we continue expanding our platform's assay portfolio. We're encouraged by the momentum we continue to see from collaborators and partners applying Nautilus' Iterative Mapping technology to complex disease-relevant biology, and by the steady progress we've made across our assay development and operational priorities. Together, these efforts position us to begin translating years of investment in what we believe will be meaningful scientific and ultimately commercial impact. I'm proud of the work that our team has accomplished and grateful to our collaborators for their partnership and trust. With a strong foundation in place and a clear path forward, we remain focused on disciplined execution as we advance the platform towards broader deployment. Thank you for joining us today. With that, we'll be happy to take your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Subbu Nambi from Guggenheim.

There was a lot of focus on the technical milestones you achieved in Q4 that provide you with the foundation for further technical improvements. Building off of that, I have a couple of questions. What comes next? By that, I mean, what are the next milestones and what metrics materially get better building off of the technical milestones you achieved in Q4? And second, have you shared these milestones with any of the key customers, especially those focused on tau? And if so, have these new developments catalyzed the path to placements?

Thanks, Subbu. I'll take that one. I think there are a couple of key sets of technical milestones, and I'll try and describe each of them. One of the really key technical milestones was the completion of the final studies of the Tau proteoform assay to make sure that it was ready and an incredibly performing assay for our Early Access Program. That data has been shared back with early customers. They're excited about the quality of the assay and really thrilled that we're -- at the data that we're able to produce. The second set of progress were on instrument readiness. And as we mentioned, coming out of our evaluation instrument at the Buck, the data we learned from that. And internally, that was really what positioned us for the announcement of the reveal of the instrument at the US HUPO conference earlier this week, and tremendous excitement about folks really being able to get their hands on the instrument and see it was great. I think the other aspect that we've been discussing in terms of moving forward are the expansion of the proteoform platform to additional targets. We mentioned alpha-synuclein and an oncology-focused target. And I think the people are -- remain very excited about proteoforms across domains. And so seeing progress towards other proteoforms validating that the platform is not just a neuro platform, but is a platform that can apply across different domains is something that we've heard a lot of positive excitement about. And then on the broadscale side, as we mentioned, the expansion of both the scale of assays that we're performing as well as the further progress on the configuration change. I think all of those things are really key contributors. As we look forward, what we're looking at are levers like increase -- further increasing on-target binding, minimizing off-target binding. We continue to progress working on assay stability of the new configuration chips that are stable over hundreds of cycles. All of these are challenges that require optimization, not innovation.

[Operator Instructions] our next question comes from Dan Brennan from TD Cowen.

This is Kyle on for Dan. So starting with this year, I know you said no material contribution from early access in terms of revenue and a modest contribution later this year from service and reiterated the commercial launch for later this year. But do you anticipate any revenue at all from a commercial launch later this year? I think the Street was modeling a few million dollars in revenue all the way out in the fourth quarter. And then maybe building off of that, have you discussed anything new around pricing for the Voyager instrument?

Kyle, I can definitely give you a little bit more color there. As you reiterated, we don't see our early access engagements as a major driver of revenue that although we do expect some modest services revenue later in the year, our revenue for 2026 will really come from two sources. First, I'm anticipating a portion of The Michael J. Fox grant funding to be recognized as revenue in 2026 with the remainder flowing into 2027. While the work that we do for that grant may vary depending on the quarter, I think it's reasonable to expect some revenue coming in from that. On top of that, with a handful of early access customers converting to revenue within the year. I'm looking at a target of closer to, say, $0.5 million for 2026. The revenue ramp tied to instruments is really coming in 2027. On the pricing front, we don't have anything in addition to any changes from what we've talked about previously.

Got it. And then maybe can you just give a little bit more color on how the Early Access Program is going, maybe some of the feedback you've received from these early customers? And then I guess building on that, can you speak to how your sales funnel is building ahead of the commercial launch later this year?

Yes. Let me tackle -- Kyle, let me tackle, this is Sujal. I'll tackle the commercial pieces of that, and Parag can give you some of the early feedback because really the early feedback is just from the Buck Institute and the Allen Institute who've been working with us in the very early stages of the early access or the late stages of their collaborations. In terms of funnel, when we launched that Early Access Program, one of the things that we said in our prepared remarks was that we elected to launch it earlier than previously communicated. And that is because the data quality and the excitement that we are seeing from customers based on the early data from the Buck and from the Allen Institute, and our own internal data as well as through our partners who were -- who worked with us on the preprint that is out now, which is MSCI and Mount Sinai. All of that data was really exciting. We elected to get out to launch. Now it's a little bit earlier than we were thinking. It's important to point out, we have absolutely 0 sales capacity in the company right now. There's not a single salesperson in the company. And so the funnel build is something in earnest that we really just began. And so HUPO was a great opportunity to get in front of a lot of potential customers. And in earnest, we will begin the sales capacity build this quarter and then continuing through the year with just a few targeted headcount. And so it's a pretty much a surgical strike sort of approach, right? It's not going to be a lot of commercial build, but we'll start to see that funnel build. Parag, do you want to talk about the feedback that we've received?

Yes, absolutely. I think a highlight of the US HUPO meeting was very much Birgit Schilling's presentation of her latest data, looking at both different brain regions of -- that complemented across these 3-xTg mice models. And then a study where she was looking at genetic alterations that predispose people -- well, either predispose people to Alzheimer's disease or are protective. And that has been a really big open question in the field about why there was this link between this gene called ApoE and Alzheimer's disease, what actually occurred, how was this linked to tau. And her data this proteoform level detail really highlighted that those genotypes potentially led to changes in tau phosphorylation and that was a critical predisposing factor. Now it's very early data, but it is exciting to have a tool that can allow us to finally see what the downstream consequences of this either protective or extremely deleterious mutation might be. And so I think we've heard from other folks at the conference, both how excited they were to see the data, how much they appreciated the quality of the data that the story itself and the multiomic link was extremely exciting to them and something that they want the ability to be able to forge those connections and see things they haven't been able to see before. So it was really exciting to get that feedback from the community.

I am showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.